Friday, July 26, 2013

10 Questions to Ask Your Pastor?

From the April 2010 E-Block.

**

Even as we are now in the midst of a dialogue
with Jason Berggren on the 10 Things he hates about Christianity, we
were asked to examine another decalogue making the rounds at present, a
list of "10 Questions to Ask Your Pastor." Apparently these are meant to
be stumpers that the average pastor won't be able to take care of,
which unfortunately, is probably true.

However, as usual, such lists as produced by atheists are the
sort that could never be renamed, "10 Questions to Ask a Christian
Apologist/Biblical Scholar," because from start to finish, there are
problems inherent in each question. Since this is, as we said, making
the rounds today, we thought it might be useful to have an answer key --
and also since it provides us the chance to comment on the nature of
the implied tactic of stumping a pastor with questions like these.

1. Why is God called loving or merciful when, in the Old
Testament's stories of the Israelite conquest, he specifically orders
his chosen people to massacre their enemies, showing no mercy to men,
women, even children and animals?

The immediate and obvious flaw in this question is that it begins
with a thoroughly anachronistic definition of both "love" and "mercy"
as meaning some sort of sentimentality that does no harm to anyone. As
we have seen elsewhere, love
relates to a concern for the greater good; to claim a problem here,
critics must compose a full-fledged philosophical and moral analysis (as
Miller has here,
in our favor) showing that God was "unloving" in this sense, and that
it did not serve the greater good for any particular persons to be
killed. Of course, the analysis must also account for the moral and
ethical priorities of the persons involved (e.g., agonistic persons who
would prefer swift death to life after what they would see as
humiliating defeat, which will not be answered by imperialistically
imposing our own values on their cultural values).

By the same token, "mercy" is not a refusal to punish, but has to
do with gratitude, and in turn in this context, fulfillment of covenant
obligations (see here).
As such it has absolutely no relevance to times when Israel "massacred"
others. These others had no covenant obligations to or from God at the
time.

2. Does it make sense to claim, as the Bible does, that
wrongdoing can be forgiven by magically transferring the blame from a
guilty person to an innocent one, then punishing the innocent person?

On this issue, please see the November 2009 E-Block article, "The
Atonement Contextualized." It is enough to say here that this
description hardly suffices to represent the mechanics of atonement
theory, which involved principles of patronage and identity that are not
even addressed by this rather childish question.

3. Why does the Bible routinely depict God as manifesting
himself in dramatic, unmistakable ways and performing obvious miracles
even before the eyes of nonbelievers, when no such thing happens in the
world today?

The problem word here is "routinely". As I have told many
critics, if they were to count the number of years in the Bible, then
count the number of miracles done in the Bible, and also factor in the
total number of people exposed to these miracles (correlating to the
total world population in the timeframes referenced), they would arrive
at an average that would reflect anything but a "routine" expression of
God in miraculous, and if anything, indicate that such manifestations
were exceptionally rare, given to a very small number of people in
relative terms, and isolated to specific "flashpoints" in history. Thus
the basis for the question is incorrect to begin with. We are given very
rare, very infrequent experiences such as these, and that is exactly in
line with our experiences today.

4. Why do vast numbers of Christians still believe in the
imminent end of the world when the New Testament states clearly that the
apocalypse was supposed to happen 2,000 years ago, during the lifetime
of Jesus' contemporaries?

5. Why do Christians believe in the soul when neurology has
found clear evidence that the sense of identity and personality can be
altered by physical changes to the brain?

Within this simple question there are a host of unstated
assumptions about the nature of the evidence provided by neurology and
how to interpret it. I am not an expert in neurology, but neither, very
likely, is the person who first formulated this question. The debate
over the existence of the soul cannot be settled with sound bites. At
the same time, it seems rather despicable to suppose that this is a
worthy question to ask a pastor, as opposed to (say) a physician,
or a philosopher. Other questions here are at least in the general
range of what a pastor should be able to answer, having to do with
Biblical interpretation. Asking a pastor questions about metaphysics to
this level, and expecting credible results, is simply irresponsible.

6. If it was always God's plan to provide salvation through
Jesus, why didn't he send Jesus from the very beginning, instead of
confusing and misleading generations of people by setting up a religion
called Judaism which he knew in advance would prove to be inadequate?

Once again, a host of unstated assumptions inhabit the query.
First, why and how is it assumed that sending Jesus "from the very
beginning" would have been less confusing, less misleading, or more
productive then sending Jesus at the time he was sent? Has the author of
this question composed a detailed analysis of multiple chronological
timelines to show that this was the case? I am obviously being
facetious, for the point is that it requires omniscience to make this
sort of statement with any authority.

Second, from whence comes the idea that Judaism "confused" and
"misled" anyone? Who was confused or misled? What is the evidence that
if they were indeed confused or misled, the fault was God's and not
theirs?

Third, there is no justification for the idea that Judaism was
"inadequate". For one thing, this begs the question of what purpose it
served: The first covenant was, as Paul puts it in Galatians, a sort of
overseer or monitor that prepared the way for the second one. This in
turn leads back to the first point: If it is asked why God did not
introduce Jesus "from the beginning" then it seems natural to suggest
that the first covenant prepared the way for the second one, bringing
about circumstances that would result in maximum benefit. In that
paradigm, the first covenant allowed for the creation of circumstances
within which the second one would be most effective.

The critic may deride this as merely speculative, but let us
remember that it is they who began by saying that history, as it stood,
was imperfectly constructed by God, so it is they who were the first to
"speculate".

7. Since the Bible states that God does not desire that anyone
perish, but also states that the majority of humankind is going to
hell, doesn't this show that God's plan of salvation is a failure even
by his own standard? If this outcome is a success, what would count as a
failure?

The primary erroneous premise here is where it is claimed that
the Bible "states that the majority of humankind is going to hell..."
That is found nowhere in text; some have suggested that it is found in
Jesus' "narrow way" teaching, but that reflects Jewish teachings about
decisions made all through life, not final soteriological decisions.

In fact, given the premise of the salvation of infants and young
children (which is Biblically supportable), and the high prevalance of
child mortality in history, the vast majority of humankind is not
going to hell. And even outside that group, it is far from clear that a
majority is condemned; if so, that must be proven, not merely stated.

8. Why didn't God create human beings such that they freely
desire to do good, thus removing the need to create a Hell at all? (If
you believe this is impossible, isn't this the state that will exist in
Heaven?)

The answer to the last question is essentially no. The persons in
heaven are not "created" to freely desire to do good; what creates that
circumstance is the combination of the renovation of person (in
resurrection) plus their realizations acquired through past experiences
in a sinful world. So once again, the question is misdirected.

9. Is it fair or rational for God to hide himself so that he
can only be known by faith, then insist that every single human being
find him by picking the right one out of thousands of conflicting and
incompatible religions?

Once again misdirections abound; it is hard to know how "faith" is being defined here, but it is not the correct definition.
At the same time, while there may be "thousands" of religions, all of
them together run down to a mere handful of variations put into slightly
different combinations. It simply is not that hard to apply one's self
to the key questions.

10. If you had the power to help all people who are suffering
or in need, at no cost or effort to yourself, would you do it? If so,
why hasn't God done this already?

The answer to the first question is no -- because the
category of "all people who are suffering or in need" is too broad and
is inclusive of persons such as, "those who are in need because they are
irresposnible," such that "helping" does little but enable them in
their own self-inflicted hardships. Second, God has helped such people already by
giving them the minds and the resources to stay out of suffering and
need, and to solve it when it does occur. Finally, there is no reason to
expect God to so help those who constantly violate His commands,
essentially saying to Him, "I don't want your rules" -- yet they also
want His aid? Isn't that what we call "ingratitude"?

Of course, my answer here is very simple, but that is fair,
because the question itself is a far too simple assertion that evil is
an unsolvable problem -- never mind that far greater minds have worked
on this issue, so that it is again irresponsible to suggest that someone
ought to pose this sort of question to a local pastor!

And now a few observations in close.

The suggestion of the author of this list is that these questions
ought to be taken to one's local pastor (or priest, or what have you)
not with the intention of solving these questions, but with the presumed
knowledge that they will not be able to answer them. Presumably, the
compiler supposes that pastors and such are in possession of enough free
time -- having been freed of their normal daily burden of counseling
the hurting, or overseeing ministerial needs, or planning sermons, that
they are able to spare the time for extensive research and commentary,
even on non-Biblical questions well outside their purview.

I have said many times that I do think pastors ought to be able
to answer these sorts of questions (at least, the ones concerning
doctrine), but a less-frequently stated corollary of mine is that
pastors are called on to do far too many things they should not be doing
-- which includes counseling.

Under the circumstances, as has been stated more than once, the
presentation of lists like these is the height of irresponsibility. Why
not suggest that the person ask a scholar or an apologist rather than a
pastor? Indeed, why just present the questions as they are; why not do a
little of one's legwork first?

The obvious answer is that lists like these are not presented in good faith.